"Are you freaking serious? I have to go all the way back to the beginning of the level?! $#@%!!!" Wherever Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts is being played, these frustrated words can be heard. Unlike Mario, Sir Arthur, the hero of Ghouls, never learned how to control his momentum in the air. That means you're committed to your jump once your feet leave the ground. If you happen to land on a pile of zombies, so be it. Checkpoints are few and far between, too, so you can plan on playing through each of the game's levels over and over again until, by some miracle, you happen to make it the boss - only to be killed and have to do it all again. Of course, we're masochists, and we love it.

F-Zero games have always been hard, and F-Zero GX on the GameCube raised the stakes in every regard. GX took the blisteringly fast races from previous entries in the series, and added merciless enemy AI and excruciating track designs. Furthermore, GX saw the introduction of Story Mode, which upped the ante even further with its utterly impossible challenges and multiple difficulty levels. The game's difficulty ramped up at a rate where players always felt like the next challenge was surmountable, if only they spent some time practicing. This game serves up a hefty helping of ass-whooping, but we just can't keep ourselves from coming back for more. Seasoned gamers complaining about the lack of difficulty in recent games obviously missed out on F-Zero GX.

Shinobi on PS2 ushered in a new era of challenging games, just when gamers were starting to grow soft. Purposefully difficult, the new 3D Shinobi adventure had classic gaming sensibilities and was just as unforgiving as the toughest old-school sidescroller. Hotsuma is cursed, requiring his blade to constantly feed on the blood of enemies. Every second the blade goes without blood costs Hotsuma a little more life, making it imperative that players be aggressive and move as quickly as possible through each level in Shinobi. And that's the easy part. The true challenges are the numerous platforming elements that require impeccable timing. One mistimed jump and Hotsuma fell to his death. Featuring no in-level checkpoints, every life lost puts Hotsuma at the start of the level. Ouch.

The Mega Man franchise is widely known for its difficulty, and its prolific nature made choosing the most difficult game in the series pretty daunting. If we had to choose, we would nominate the original game, simply because it lacked the later refinements that made the games "easier" (we use that term loosely). In original, you can neither slide nor charge your Mega Buster. The energy tanks that appeared in later games were also lacking, making for frequent deaths. Add to that nigh impossible platforming sequences, lack of a save feature, and ruthless bosses -- all of whom must be defeated twice -- and you have one of the hardest games ever made. This game barely edges out Mega Man Zero as the toughest title in the series to date.

The Contra series is known for separating the Spartans from the Persians. And while gamers will debate which game in the series is actually the hardest (a very strong case can be made for Contra Hard Corps), we went with the original since it's basically responsible for introducing cheat codes. Contra is virtually impossible to beat without entering the Konami code -- and even then, there's a good chance Mad Dog and Scorpion won't make it to their showdown with Red Falcon. As if one-hit kills weren't enough, your friends can even end you if they don't wait up while scaling that waterfall. Any way you slice it, Contra is hardcore.